1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique to execute sound processing, such as effect imparting, on data (hereinafter referred to as “processing object data”) received from a terminal apparatus through a communication network and to transmit it to the terminal apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Hitherto, a technique is proposed in which a sound processing apparatus (server apparatus) to communication with a terminal apparatus executes various sound processings on behalf of the terminal apparatus (see, for example, patent document 1 and patent document 2). The sound processing apparatus executes sound processing on the processing object data received from the terminal apparatus, and transmits data (hereinafter referred to as “processed data”) after the processing to the terminal apparatus. According to the above technique, the processed data generated by the sound processing can be used by the terminal apparatus without installing hardware or software necessary for the sound processing in the terminal apparatus.    [Patent document 1] JP-A-10-177380    [Patent document 2] JP-A-11-085148
A procedure based on, for example, the well-known HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) can be adopted for the communication between the terminal apparatus and the sound processing apparatus. FIG. 7 is an explanatory view of the communication between the terminal apparatus and the sound processing apparatus. As shown in FIG. 7, the terminal apparatus successively transmits a processing request P (PUT request) including processing object data DA to the sound processing apparatus at a specified period T0. The sound processing apparatus receiving the processing request P transmits to the terminal apparatus a response notification RP (response) to the processing request P, and executes sound processing on the processing object data DA in the processing request P. Besides, the terminal apparatus successively transmits a transmission request G (GET request) to instruct transmission of processed data DB. The sound processing apparatus receiving the transmission request G causes the processed data DB generated by the sound processing to be included in a response notification RG and transmits it to the terminal apparatus.
However, in the technique of FIG. 7, both the processing request P and the transmission request G are transmitted from the terminal apparatus to the sound processing apparatus, and the response notification RP to the processing request P and the response notification RG to the transmission request G are transmitted from the sound processing apparatus to the terminal apparatus. Accordingly, there is a problem that the number of times of communication between the terminal apparatus and the sound processing apparatus is large.
Besides, in order to prevent a situation that the generation of the processed data DB is not yet completed at the time point when the sound processing apparatus receives the transmission request G, as shown in FIG. 7, before the transmission of the first transmission request G is started after the terminal apparatus started the transmission of the processing request P, a sufficient time τ must be secured so that it can be expected that the sound processing on the first processing object data DA is certainly completed. That is, even when the sound processing on the processing object data DA is completed at time point ta, the terminal apparatus can not acquire the processed data DB until time point tb when the time τ passes from the first processing request P (further, until the terminal apparatus receives the response notification RG to the first transmission request G after the time τ passed). Accordingly, there is also a problem that the delay time from the start of transmission of the processing request by the terminal apparatus to the acquisition of the processed data is long.